Archive for the ‘Guy N. Smith’ Category

Rouse suddenly let out a piercing scream releasing him from the paralysis of sheer terror in which those malevolent red eyes had held him. In panic he turned and tried to scramble up the slippery rockface. But his feet could not grip; slowly he began sliding back down, ever closer to the nightmarish form that was rapidly approaching, its huge claws waving in the air, its powerful jaws opening and closing in anticipation.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ the headman asked. ‘All the British troops have retreated, yet you are heading into Japanese-occupied territory.’

Malaya was about to fall to the Japanese, and a group of nurses had been taken prisoner by the notorious Colonel Sika. Carter knew they faced sadistic torture, even a hideous death. It was up to him and his band of Chinese guerillas to rescue them from Sika’s clutches – but in a hostile jungle where the heat and fever caused nearly as many deaths as the fighting itself. It would be a desperate and bloody struggle.

Another wild card. Not strictly horror fiction, but this exercise in war-pulp-torture-porn is unquestionably horrible enough for most of us. The way Guy N. Smith tells it, Peter Haining encouraged him “to go as far as I could on the sex and violence.” Guy, pro that he is, dutifully obliged.

“Slowly the snake slithered over his helpless body. Eyes, cold and unblinking, stared into his eyes. The long, long body dragged heavily across his throat. As he gulped in terror he could feel the dry rasp of scales against his Adam’s Apple.

Trapped, chest crushed, hands pinned behind the wheel of his truck, unable to tear at the creature, his mind shrivelled in impotent horror. Then, the sudden searing strike, the teeth sharp in his shoulder, the pain, the pain …”

Motorway Madness the papers called it once again. The piled burning cars and trucks. The blood and the wreckage. But this time there would be an added horror. Snakes. In transit and now escaping. Snakes that would coil and climb, creeping into garages, into houses, into bedrooms ….

Something monstrously old and vile had been brought back by him. Something that had lain in darkness for three thousand years, feeding on the juices of its own hatred and decay like some gigantic chrysalis of evil.

Until it was disturbed, dug up, split open to allow its vengeful bile to seep out, releasing the curse of ancient Gods doing battle once more. While the seven plagues of Egypt were reborn, crawling out of the dark places to corrupt and destroy the flesh. To strip bare the mind, left pulsing, unprotected against a lethal injection of all-destroying horror.

Margaret Gunn remembered that terrible night nine months before when she had been horribly raped by a man in a wolf’s skin. And now she was giving birth to his son.

Margaret prayed that he would be normal, but as he grew up her most dreaded fears were realised: his large head, hideous face, terrible temper and animal-like behaviour were all signs. Then came the first murder and the final realisation…